With the rapid popularization of electronic devices, the electronic devices are becoming one of the essentials of life. Mobile terminal is a representative example of the electronic device. The mobile terminal has been evolved to the electronic device capable of playing multimedia data including video and audio data as well as providing legacy voice telephony service and data transfer service.
Also, there are various methods developed for multiple users having their own mobile terminals to transfer multimedia files to external electronic devices. Also, there are various methods developed for one user to share files among two or more user's own mobile terminals. As a consequence, there is a tendency that files sharing among the users' own terminals or with other terminals is performed directly rather than through any external web or P2P service.
In the conventional technology, the file exchange among the electronic device is performed with a means selected by the user. The data transfer time varies depending on the transfer means selected by the user and the varying transfer environment. Such dependency on the transfer means and transfer environment makes it difficult for the user to predict the data transfer time.
Although the multimedia file is compressed to be transmitted with a certain compression scheme, the compressed file is also large in size in general due to the nature of the multimedia file. This means that it takes relatively long time to transfer the multimedia file. Particularly when transferring music files by category such as genre, artiest, running time, and periodic ranking, the number and amount of files to be transmitted at a time increases significantly. This means that the transfer time increases in proportion to the number and amount of files.
Typically, it is likely that the user transfers a plurality of files at a time. The plural multimedia files are presented with file names and extensions in the form of a file list. The user has to check the files to be stored or transmitted with eyes and select cumbersomely.
Assuming an exemplary case of intending to share about 50 music files between two electronic devices, the transmit-side user has to select the music files requested by the receive-side user one by one or all the files to send. The receive-part can check the types and contents of the music files after the file transfer has completed but not in the course of transferring. This means that one of the transmit-side and receive-side users has to spent relatively long time to check the list of 50 music files or to select the files to build the list.
If it takes so long time to transfer the files, this means that the user has to wait for the completion of the file transfer. If it is not the user's intention to listen to all the music files, this is a need of an extra task to check the titles of the received music files and register the selected files with a playback list. The waiting time for the completion of the copy transfer is likely to cause significant user inconvenience.
Meanwhile, the user may want to listen to the music files during the transfer. In the conventional method where the user downloads the multimedia file through the web or P2P, it is possible to play the file to the download-complete point immediately in the course of downloading. This means that the user can receive and play the first song simultaneously.
In the case of transferring a plurality files, however, the user cannot pre-listen the next or another file among the files being transferred before the next file is downloaded to some extent after the complete of download of the first file.
This means that it is not possible for the user to pre-play all the files being transferred before the completion of the transfer. Since there is no manager in direct file transfer between terminals for providing the file list or playback service like the web, the user cannot pre-listen all of the songs. There is therefore a need of a pre-playback method and apparatus of an electronic device capable of the above problems.